Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Authors' contributions

ICM had collected the data in the various surveys over a number of
years. ICM and KVP jointly decided how to do the statistical analysis,
and KVP was responsible for the programming and data analysis. ICM
wrote the first draft of the paper, which was revised by KVP, with both
authors being responsible for the final draft.

Acknowledgments

We thank the many medical students and doctors who, over many years,
have enabled ICM to carry out these longitudinal studies of medical
student selection and training. K V Petrides was supported by a
Postdoctoral Research Fellowship awarded by the Economic and Social
Research Council (ESRC) and mentored by I C McManus.